As far as the Robotech toys go, I had the Rand figure (no picture, unfortunately) and his motorcycle.. I had the big 9-foot tall bad guy w/ one eye (the site says he's 44 1/2 feet tall, but the perspective must have been grossly underdone from what I remember of the show).. I also had one of the battle pods.. The darned vehicles never seem to come w/ figures..

It seems that there weren't than many vehicles that came w/ figures at all during that time, really.. My little brother can now get three different Batman Forever, Batman & Robin, and Batman-Goes-to-the-Nursing-Home vehicles and each comes w/ its own unique figure.. Of course, one's purple, one glows in the dark and the other may have inventions Batman would never use.. Maybe it's because the Batman and other common action figures now are derived from popularized, episodic fiction that has little continuity to build a well-structured world around--that's how I remember Robotech, Voltron, and Transformers. Yeah.. Action figures now are all Chromium Batman, Orange Hunting Suit Batman, and How-many-things-can-I-stick-on-my-belt-and-arms? Batman..

I can't really blame my parents, aunts, grandparents, etc., for the follies of an industry's inability to creat a realm of continuuity with a collectable distribution of toys that is arranged in a 1:1 vehicle-to-figure ratio. I would imagine the manufacturers are just trying to quell unnecessary disappointment like those experiences I had of getting the 'Boomer' figure kind of like in Jingle All the Way.. That's what those impossibly to count Batman figures are all about to me.. I guess the little farts end up with something for the holidays--even if Batman would never wear a flashlight-lined suit as the 'Dark Knight.' It's definitely not right for the kid to have to put a Joker's henchman figure on the Robin Cycle because 'Style-me-green' Robin didn't come with it.

Yeah.. I remember many Middle-class 80s kid scenarios that seemed as conundrums. There were Transformers, Go-Bots (what a joke they were, but they were first), GI Joes, He-Man (and the Masters of the Universe), Robotech, assorted D.C. SuperFriends, Thundercats, Voltron, and countless other series of toys. This balance issue mandated the mixing and matching of toy worlds often.. I always ended up putting my one Robotech figure or one of my two GI Joes into that battle pod.. My 'SuperFriends Batman' would go into the Voltron Black Lion--the only lion I had of the five in that size. My parents never seemed to understand that not having those other four lions seemed like a deficiency to my childhood. Still, I liked my Transformers the best. They were the toy I had the most of (not counting Legos). I don't know if I demaned more Transformers or if I just ended up w/ a couple more than He-Man and tried to continue the streak by probing for robotic gifts.

Actually, now that I think about it.. I had more He-Man toys than anything.. That had to be based on economic factors more than anything though.. I can't conceive of my actually wanting that dinosaur skeleton 12-figure transport with the mouth that could hold weapons.. I collected He-Man in the 1st and 2nd grades heavily, but the Transformers really popped up some-time between my birthday in August through Christmas in the 3rd grade.. I just stuck with them--at least in desire.

Did Bandai make the Robotech toys? They're the toyco that created the Power Rangers collection phenomenon, you know. I almost bought one of those $50 suckers because someone guarranteed me that it was worth $100 easy, but I actually did the smart thing and folded my money and put it in my back pocket to double it--for once.

L8rz,
Clicket [Jason Brewer]
02-02 to 02-10, 2000